FtF News #72 - 14th October 2020
The Earthshot Prize, tougher EU targets, and the IEA is finally giving renewables their due
Hello, and welcome to Forge the Future, your weekly rundown of the latest climate news.
Days are getting shorter here in the UK, and with potential lockdowns looming on the horizon, it’s easy to get caught up in the here and now - it can be hard to pull away to the longer-term shifts that need to take place. However, those big macro changes are ultimately the ones that matter - this week’s publishing of the IEA’s World Energy Outlook made it very clear just how big those changes need to be. However, with major pushes like the EU’s deeper emissions cuts, and China’s 2060 net-zero pledge (which apparently covers all GHGs, not just CO2), there are still reasons to remain hopeful. Even if headlines do manage to get hijacked by an enterprising fly!
State of the world
Climate research and findings, weather events and studies
In what sadly is becoming a near monthly event, Copernicus Climate Change Service have announced that September was the hottest on record, with 2020 as a whole alarmingly close to being the hottest year ever. It bears repeating that the last seven years were also the hottest seven ever, and of the hottest 20, only one was not in the last 20 years.
The US and Mexico are dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Delta, which swept through the Yucatan, battering Cancun, before crossing the Gulf of Mexico and striking Louisiana. Fortunately, neither was hit as hard as initial predictions suggested, with Cancun receiving a Category 3 storm, and Louisiana receiving a far less severe hit than from Hurricane Laura. However, particularly the US impact hit hard, coming as it did less than six weeks after the far more devastating Laura, and wrecking areas just barely beginning rebuilding efforts.
India has seen the first declines in sulfur dioxide emissions in four years. The country is the world’s largest emitter, producing 21% of global emissions of the substance, which causes acid rain and other health risks. Much of the fall is due to declining coal consumption. In a similar vein, London has seen far clearer air in the past four years, with a 94% reduction in the number of people living in areas with illegal levels of nitrogen dioxide.
The Global Carbon Project has completed its first comprehensive assessment of how N2O emissions are contributing to climate change. Human emissions have increased by 30% over the past four decades, mostly due to use of fertiliser and production of nitrogen-based livestock feed. As the gas is almost 300 times more potent than CO2 over a 100 year period, more efforts are needed to track and reduce emissions, as currently they aren’t being tackled in line with climate agreements.
Planet positives
Moving towards a greener and more equitable world
Clean Leadership
The EU parliament has endorsed a plan to cut emissions by 60% by 2030, a jump from its original 55% target. This doesn’t mean it will be approved by member states, but does send a strong message that the parliament wants to act strongly on the environment. The current leadership is under pressure to pass the new stricter targets before Germany passes leadership over to Portugal next year.
Rampant Renewables
The renewable energy company NextEra has become more valuable than oil giant Exxon Mobil for the first time. Exxon’s value took a further hit this week when leaked internal emissions forecasts showed the company planning to increase its emissions by 17% over the next five years. Meanwhile, in South Australia, solar power met 100% of electricity demand briefly over the weekend, exceeding previous records of 94% set just weeks before. Solar will never meet 100% of demand 24/7, but increasingly the Australian grid is being updated to accommodate ever larger amounts of solar power.
The IEA released their 2020 flagship World Energy Outlook report yesterday. The agency has come under fire in previous years for spectacularly underestimating the fall of prices and rise of renewables. This year, they broke with their traditional techniques and focused heavily on what would be needed to achieve net-zero globally by 2050. Whilst doable, enormous change is needed if we want to hit this target, including shifting 75% of electricity generation to low-carbon sources by 2030, ensuring over 50% of new vehicles are EVs, and between ⅓ and ½ of global building stock is retrofitted for energy efficiency. However, they also noted that renewables are set to make up 80% of new power generation by 2030, and by 2040 there could be more capacity in wind and solar than in fossil fuel power plants.
The ‘Earthshot’
Prince William has unveiled the ‘Earthshot’ prize, a ten year program with a star-studded panel of judges including the venerable Sir David Attenborough. The prize will award £1m to an idea in each of five areas for each of the next ten years, with the hope being to inspire positive action and urgency around fixing the environment. The prize targets protecting and restoring nature, cleaning up the air, reviving the oceans, eliminating waste from the world, and fixing the climate.
Pledges, pledges everywhere...
Another week, and there have been net zero pledges by J P Morgan Chase, HSBC and even the City of London. All of them have made encouraging noises about cutting their direct emissions, and J P Morgan even said it will push its clients to clean up their acts. Mars Inc has also announced this week that it has removed all palm-oil suppliers that contribute to deforestation from its supply chain, and is using satellite imagery and third party validation to ensure suppliers act as they claim. With so many pledges from so many companies, it can be hard to really understand which ones are meaningful and which ones are so much hot air. The Huffington Post released a guide that breaks down the key ways to understand what pledges actually amount to.
Adverse circumstances
Events that move the needle in the wrong direction
Imperfect Education
A study looking at the performance of US students found that heat is linked to worse test scores for black and hispanic children. The likely cause? A lack of air-conditioning at home and at school. The students performed worse on standardised tests for every additional day of 80°F or higher, even after controlling for other factors. The paper’s author, Dr R Jisung Park, described heat as,
‘A thousand little cuts to your ability to focus and concentrate and learn’.
Another report looking at climate change teaching across the US gave 6 states an ‘F’ grade, with 20 states receiving no better than a ‘C+’. In a number of states, climate change is still taught as a matter of debate rather than fact, despite several of them being those most at risk from climate change-induced disasters such as hurricanes. It is immensely frustrating that 164 years after Eunice Newton Foote first theorised the link between humans and climate change, we still don’t consistently teach students the facts.
Long Reads
Interesting deep-dives into climate-related topics
It’s clear that as the balance of energy generation shifts from oil to renewables, geopolitics will also change. However, the details of what that might look like are perhaps surprising - whilst often simplified as ‘China wins, OPEC countries lose’, the possibilities are significantly more nuanced, and it could see power shift in unexpected ways.
Hydrogen is a complex topic, and with the renewed interest in the fuel as a green solution from the EU and others, there’s a lot of hype bouncing around. Michael Liebreich picks apart some of the myths and tries to figure out what the reality of hydrogen looks like on the supply side.
That’s all I have for you this week. As always, thank you for reading, and if you liked it, why not share it with a friend? If you’ve any thoughts, feedback or suggestions, I’d love to hear them - you can reach me at oli@forgethefuture.com.
Stay safe, wear a mask, and see you next week,
Oli